2nd NEARCTIS (Network of Excellence for Advanced Road Traffic management in the Information Society) workshop will take place in London, co-hosted by CTS and the Centre for Transport Studies of UCL.

The aim of NEARCTIS is to bring together a number of academic teams around Europe, working on traffic management and optimisation with a particular focus on cooperative systems, and to integrate their research activities.

The workshop will include presentations and posters from partner institutions, with the objective of facilitating the exchange of ideas between institutions. An innovation that the workshop will feature is a so-called “early-stage researchers” posters session, where postgraduate researchers in their early stages (18 months or less) will be given the opportunity to inform the NEARCTIS community on their activities and plans, and gain useful feedback in return.

For more information, please visit the NEARCTIS web site.

The 17th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory ( ISTTT17 ) will be held at the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, UK from July 23 - 25, 2007.

The ISTTT series is the main gathering for the world's transportation and traffic theorists, and those who are interested in contributing to or gaining a deeper understanding of the field. The Symposium deals with both scientific and operational aspects of transportation and traffic, spanning all modes of transport, and covering freight as well as private and public transport.

The field of transportation and traffic theory is continually undergoing change and renewal, driven by new technologies, novel problems thrown up by new technologies or shifts in global circumstances, and advances in associated disciplines. While well-established themes invariably elicit interesting contributions, high quality papers on new topics often stimulate fruitful research in novel directions, frequently reported in subsequent Symposia. Careful refereeing and selection of papers ensure that the Symposia provide a fertile and erudite forum for seminal contributions, occasionally from researchers previously unknown to the field. To ensure maximum impact, all sessions are plenary, which necessarily limits the number of papers that can be accepted. The ISTTT proceedings are published directly before each Symposium and provided to each registered participant upon arrival. As the interval between each Symposium has been reduced to two years from 2005, the gap between abstract submission and paper publication is now less than two years, which compares favourably with many international journals. The Symposium proceedings carry the status of a peer-reviewed international journal, an important consideration for junior academics. For aspiring academics and researchers at all levels, the Symposium may prove to be a career-defining moment.

Like its predecessors, ISTTT17 will keep an open mind about the scope of the conference and what constitutes transportation and traffic theory. Its ambition is to reflect the best work underway anywhere in the world on the science and operation of traffic and transportation. We hope to be surprised by the novelty of some of the contributions, even when they may not fit directly into the line of work represented at previous Symposia.

For information and pictures from the last symposium in the series, visit the ISTTT16 web site.

The Port Operations Research and Technology Centre (PORTeC) and the Transport Risk Management Centre, two research groups within the Centre of Transport Studies (CTS) at Imperial College London, are organising in association with the Lloyd's Register an International Workshop on Risk Management in Port Operations and Logistics, to be held at Imperial College on 29 September 2006.

Recent world events have focused attention on security, risk and reliability in supply chains and are having a major impact on the port and logistics industries. This workshop will provide a unique forum to discuss risk management in the context of ports and supply chains that pass through ports. In particular, this event addresses the operational challenges that port, international logistics and supply chain operators face today in view of the new security regulations and the requirements of increased visibility throughout the supply chain.

This event will mix plenary sessions with parallel sessions for more detailed presentations from invited academics and practitioners.

Amongst the topics likely to be covered in the workshop are the following:

- Risk analysis and assessment models

- Operational reliability and robustness

- System efficiency and performance

- Supply chain planning and management

- Economic and cost impacts of security

- Quality assurance standards (e.g. ISO 28000, 28001, 20858)

- Technology and ICT applications

- Policy and regulatory issues

For more information, please visit http://www.cts.cv.imperial.ac.uk/documents/portec/flyer.pdf .

The symposium, dedicated to the late Professor Peter Hills, will bring together a large group of leading experts on the theory of congestion charging from Hong Kong, Japan, United States, Singapore, Norway, Germany, France, Sweden, Italy and the UK. A technical tour of the London congestion charging system will be included.

A summary of the symposium in pdf format can be downloaded here. (This file is 3.5Mb). If you have any difficulties downloading the pdf file then the file can also be downloaded in zip format here.

A zip file containing all the presentations can be downloaded here. Please be aware that this file is 38Mb.